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10 Dec 2016 5:44:44pm

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@Hayden Legro

If somebody offers some unwelcome slur about my mother or yours then we can both more or less understand and appreciate the gravity of it because we all have mothers. The problem I think we all have with blasphemy as opposed to any other kind of insult is that anyone who doesn't share your reverence for some particular aspect of your faith lacks genuine appreciation as to why this matters to you. Whether they're in that position because they subscribe to another faith or because they're atheist I don't think that should stop them from trying to empathise or from recognising when they're being less than civil towards another human being.

Yet I think it is important also to be mindful that the human right of religious freedom in a diverse, civilised, modern pluralist society also infers freedom from religion. We can't in that context be vigilant against subtle forms of religious discrimination without reciprocating against religiously inspired intolerance where that also exists.

So when some more bigoted member of the community refers to your god or his representatives in a negative way then this person is clearly ignorant of your perspective. They don't see the articles of your faith in the same way as you do being worthy of their respect. They may in effect not even be truly thinking of or talking about a god or a prophet that is recognisably the entity you esteem.

What they may see instead is the intolerance and bigotry of the worst of your faith's followers. They undoubtedly find that to be an unacceptable impost upon them and their beliefs. That's what intolerance is like. You can't deflect it by offering your sensitivity to their bigotry as your Achilles heel or they'll kick you there every time. And you can't expect the word "sacred" to have any effect upon others who don't share your reverence.

Nor would it ever be anything short of the hypocrisy a poster mentions above to use the advantage of free speech to argue that free speech is bad.

Regard if you will the thought that I may think you're wrong without insisting that I am right. That's about the only way I can sum this up if I mean us to share tolerance. The competing ideas from those people who would go so far as to enact blasphemy laws are not just anathema to free speech but actively antithetical to the kind of moral agency that fosters greater tolerance as well. If it isn't freely chosen and worthy of merit then why would bigots change their stripes?